Wireless communication is becoming omnipresent in today's society as people increasingly use cordless phones, cellular phones, wireless data communication devices, and the like on a daily basis. The ability to communicate wirelessly has become pervasive in homes, in businesses, at retail establishments, on the roadways, and in the outdoors generally. Consequently, people can now communicate while in transit and in almost any environment.
Wireless communication involves the use of a limited resource: the electromagnetic spectrum. Different wireless communication schemes utilize different bands or segments of the electromagnetic spectrum in different manners. Typically, each particular segment of the electromagnetic spectrum is utilized in accordance with at least one wireless standard that has been created by a government entity, an industry consortium, and/or some other regulatory body.
The various wireless standards may each be placed into one or more categories reflecting different types of wireless communication. An example wireless communication type is synchronous communication. With synchronous communication, time may be divided into regular periodic intervals and communications may be repeatedly transmitted during these regular intervals. On one hand, the predictable, orderly nature of synchronous communication can provide efficiencies with respect to how a particular segment of the electromagnetic spectrum is utilized. On the other hand, a system employing synchronous communication can tend to monopolize the particular electromagnetic spectrum segment that it uses to the exclusion of other systems. In contrast, asynchronous communication does not schedule transmissions during regular periodic time intervals, but instead communications are initiated when needed by an initiating device. Such asynchronous communication can often occur in bursts in correlation to the needs of an application being used in the device that initiates the communication.